Last November, an independent review of the national road system by Alan Cook, the non-executive chairman of the Highways Agency, identified the importance of effective asset management to the future of the road network. On 24 May, transport secretary Justine Greening published the government's response to the Cook review and outlined a 20-year strategic plan for the Highways Agency, including a study by the Department for Transport and the Treasury into the feasibility of new ownership and financing models for roads.

The transport department has spent £6m setting up a new efficiency programme for highways, which in June 2012 is due to launch software to help highway authorities that want to use asset management techniques. New guidance on these techniques is expected in July.

At a highways conference in Derby on 30 May, public managers from local and national highways authorities heard how Blackpool council has embraced asset management techniques and as a result expects to save £100m over the next 25 years.

Will Britain, Blackpool's principal highways engineer, explained that just two years ago his authority was struggling to maintain its highways network – a problem for many authorities and one likely to get worse as a result of budget cuts. As a result, the council was hit by a soaring number of compensation claims.

Brtain explained that things needed to change: "Blackpool has history of being bold and taking calculated risks to move the town forward and using this spirit officers began to develop an approach to dealing with the state of highways that was not focused on decline but on investment to produce a fit for purpose network."

At an early stage it was understood that accurate and detailed data of the condition of the city's highways network would be needed. Officers teamed up with a local ICT company to compile this data, which produced a "convincing asset management plan," accounting for every square metre of the network.

"Quite simply, the way we had always measured condition at best gave a broad overview to make broad allocations of money as scarce resources were rationed," Britain said. "This lack of confidence when presenting management reports to members made it hard to argue the case for funding – particularly when you are going up against children's services."

The council knew the level of investment required to repair the network far outweighed annual allocations received from Whitehall or through local investment plans. So an investment model was developed, based on prudential borrowing of £30m over 25 years with an initial investment period of four years.

"The detailed work on our asset management plan coupled with a robust financial model has been the necessary foundation to get members to approve our largest prudential borrowing project yet," Britain added.

Adept president Matthew Lugg, who is advising the DfT on the highways maintenance efficiency programme, said he was initially "pleasantly surprised" with those local authorities that had good asset management plans and was impressed with how they defended their budgets. "But I'm now surprised more local authorities are not looking at prudential borrowing to do the same thing," he said. "The numbers stack up in favour of good asset management."

Richard Arrowsmith, who leads the Highways Agency's network operations directorate, said asset managementt is about making informed decisions on performance outcomes, finance and risk.

The Highways Agency network is valued at about £130bn. "There is a huge drive to reduce fiscal costs and that has included a 30% cut in our maintenance and renewal budgets," Arrowsmith said. The agency is introducing new outcome-based asset support contracts, which are expected to save £19m during this financial year.

The Highways Agency's asset management office has also introduced a national programme for the allocation of funding for schemes. Bids are compared and prioritised against value and benefit criteria, while evidence requirements to support funding bids have been significantly increased.

But it has not been easy, acknowledged Arrowsmith. "Overcoming the engineering dominance and broadening the decision making environment to include a wider asset management perspective has been extremely challenging."